Well, this is certainly my favorite comic of the week, a complete reprinting of the original Popeye #1 published by Dell Comics in 1948. 48 pages of comics, plus inner covers and back cover plus a swell front cover, all filled with fights and jokes, which I know you people like, for only $3.99. Worth every single penny.

Mike Allred draws the new issue of Daredevil, and…okay, don’t get me wrong, I think Daredevil as written by Mark Waid is a great comic, and currently one of the best, if not the best, Marvel has to offer right now. Even the non-Waid annual, which was written and drawn by Alan Davis, was a lot of fun. But there have been an awful lot of Daredevil comics recently, and double-checking the invoices…sure enough, there have been three regular issues plus the annual released over the last five weeks. Of course, the indicia does say “published Monthly except in May and August” but still, I don’t know you want to push your readers’ pocketbooks quite that much, especially with current economic conditions and with an audience base that’s looking for pretty much any reason to reduce their disposable income expenditures. Flooding the stands with consecutive issues of a series on what appears to be no set schedule is a good way to overwhelm your readership, and cause them to cut even titles they like if they think they can’t afford to keep up.

I mean, I get it. It’s a publishing and marketing strategy, designed to push other comics off the shelves, and force customers to devote more money to your popular “essential” titles while taking money away from your competitors’ titles (and hopefully not from too many of your own, though that inevitably happens). And it’s the kind of short term profiteering necessary in the current depressed comics marketplace, where you have to grab that money while it’s being shoved in your direction, as trying to build up a solid readership over an extended period of time takes, well, an extended period of time, and who has time to wait for that, amiright?

…That’s a long-winded way to say “I wish they’d stick to a schedule,” because cranking out a new issue of a series every one or two weeks causes my customers to increasingly groan “another new issue already?” even on titles they love. And that’s not an attitude anyone in this industry can afford to encourage.

Okay, wasn’t intending to rant about that. The new Daredevil is great. And let’s end this on an up note:

So this relaunch of Supreme by Erik Larsen and Cory Hamscher, picking up from the Alan Moore run from a few years back, is a bit of a hidden gem, I think. It’s a hoot and half, despite that bloody cover I scanned up there which fits in fine in context, honest. There’s all kind of crazy stuff going on in this series, and Invincible fans may want to pick up this particular issue. That the Moore issues which preceded this series are out of print and not always readily available in back issue bins is a shame, and may have hurt this restart’s chances with those stories being mostly out of memory. But, hell, just jump on in…it’s a lot of fun, and it’s not like you’ve read every single issue of, say, Batman before you read your first Batman story. You’ll live.

It’s funny that Marvel’s double-shipping policy has had the opposite effect on me of pushing me towards buying more books from their competitors. Rather than spending $6 or so monthly on Dardevil, I’m spending that much on two other DC or Image series and am generally pretty happy. My pull-list is down to one Marvel title and that’s getting canceled (Defenders).

I love Daredevil and I love Alan Davis’ art, but I balked at laying out $4.99 for his Annual. DD is on my pull list, but I specifically called up my LCS and cancelled the Annual. I used that money for 1 and 2/3 other comics last week. Daredevil’s about the only title I can think of that I’m not grudgingly keeping up with Marvel’s extra-shipping tactics. Only because it’s such high quality. I have dropped other Marvel titles recently because I don’t want to allocate the money in my comics budget for those extra books each month. I don’t really miss those books since there’s so many other great titles starting to come out from the non-big two companies.

Just to toss this out there for anyone who has any interest, but the DAREDEVIL annual is one of a TRILOGY of annuals that are tied-together (although, each is free-standing, should you only want the one you want).

The story in each, by Alan (“I draws me some damn purty pictures”) Davis features a (heretofore unknown) tale set back a few years ago with his ClanDestine characters.

The first of the 3 annuals was the FANTASTIC FOUR annual (and co-starred DOCTOR STRANGE).

I don’t know why my post showed up as anon, my autofill must not have been working, but it was me that made that comment about our local shop(s).

I stopped at one last night, of course they didn’t have it. I’m going to stop at the other tomorrow to see if they have it.

The big problem here is that I no longer do the weekly comic shop stop and don’t have a pull-list anymore, I just buy trades, so nobody seems to want to deal with somebody who might not stop for another 4-6 weeks to pick up a single book.

Yeah, it’s kinda like throwing away free money, since I drop $40+ on back issues/TPB’s every time I stop.

The trouble is, Alan Moore’s run on Supreme was SO good (it’s essentially the third part of a thematic trilogy on superheroes with Marvelman and Watchmen being the others) that anything was going to be disappointing in comparison, especially since Moore’s run just kinda ended without a proper resolution. It was, of course, inevitable that no one could live up to Moore, and Larsen was totally up front about it, but still–considering that Moore’s run was specifically designed to help comics move past the “grim n’ gritty” era and celebrate imaginative Silver Age stuff, and the world that Moore created was so fascinating, Larsen’s decision to go back to the early 90s style and clear the continuity decks was never going to sit right. Especially since the other relaunches of Liefeld stuff have been so great.